CINCINNATI -- The sweet reasonableness of a recalcitrant mule has little on Romeo Crennel. He is a loyal man, to a fault sometimes.

Fault for the Browns' 0-3 start is what everyone but the Browns coach wants to ascribe to Derek Anderson. Yet Anderson won a game as the Browns' starting quarterback Sunday, and he apparently has the job for as long as Crennel has his. Which means for the rest of the season, at least and perhaps also at most.

That's if you go by the evidence of Sunday's 20-12 victory over 0-4 Cincinnati, which was not using injured starting quarterback Carson Palmer, a former Heisman Trophy winner and a guy who has been to the NFL playoffs, but instead Ryan Fitzpatrick of Harvard, where he was presumably quite the handful for Dartmouth, Columbia and Brown.

The Browns, however, sicced their pass rushers and blitzers on the backup, sacked him three times, intercepted him three times, and seriously reduced the Bengals' chances unless the game somehow were to be decided by knowledge of where to get a really good bowl of clam chowder.

Anderson was better than in the first three games but still not really all that good -- 15-of-24, 138 yards, an interception, a touchdown pass, a sack.

The Browns had gotten away from the balance they showed last season when Jamal Lewis was running wild and Braylon Edwards and Kellen Winslow were setting team receiving records. Injuries to the receiving corps meant the passing attack is still a misfire at times. So the game plan Anderson was handed basically consisted of handing off to Lewis, who followed his line and the savage blocking of fullback Lawrence Vickers. Back-up Brady Quinn could have handled that. In all probability, at least in the early going, so could Ohio State freshman Terrelle Pryor.

At halftime, with the Browns down, 6-3, Crennel didn't make a change, nor when Anderson threw an interception on his first possession of the third quarter, nor when the Browns went three-and-out on their second possession of the third quarter. He said afterward, "DA was harassed a little bit, especially on one of his interceptions. I think if he wasn't harassed, that would have been a good play for our team. So I decided to give him another chance. He took advantage and finished out the game on a good note."

The third quarter ended with the Browns still down, 6-3. Anderson had nearly scuttled the drive in progress at quarter's end with an interception. But it was offset by that Browns' defensive staple, neutral zone infringement, which had been copied for the moment by Bengals' defensive end Antwan Odom.

Into the fourth quarter slogged the Browns, their players' coach almost welded to the hip of the player who will make him or break him, both staying the course although it seemed to lead nowhere.

Finally, after narrowly missing on a fade to the right end zone corner to Edwards, Anderson threw the same pass to the left corner. Edwards made a one-handed catch, as spectacular in degree of difficulty as the ones he drops can be in their easiness.

Edwards knelt and played a couple of arm-windmilling licks on an "air" guitar in celebration of his first touchdown catch after he rang up a franchise-record 16 last year. One hopes he was not playing "Satisfaction," for much must still be done.

Crennel spoke of the Browns playing as a team, all units, offense, defense, and special teams. Josh Cribbs said he had tears in his eyes to see so much teamwork breaking out when divisiveness could have been the tone instead.

Maybe Crennel's presence in the locker room is strong enough to offset his inflexibility. But it will take more than a victory over the winless, short-handed Bengals to make it all that appealing, just as will take a lot more by Anderson against the much better teams ahead to make him close to the player he was last year.

After the game, the Browns said their first victory got a "monkey" off their back. They did not address the issue of the mule.

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